


Water Lily

by AceQueenKing



Category: Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth
Genre: Gen, Non-Sexual Slavery, Slave Trade, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-29 02:39:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6355570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Asaka pays Belenus' gift forward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Water Lily

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wallwalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallwalker/gifts).



> My whole life is mine, but whoever says so  
> will deprive me, for it is infinite.  
> The ripple of water, the shade of the sky  
> are mine; it is still the same, my life.  
>  _Water Lily -Rainer Maria Rilke_

Asuka once vowed never to return to Lassen's slave markets.

She has never quite forgotten them, though she has not set foot in them for over a decade. She remembers the cramped boats, packed full of young girls and boys torn from a once-proud homeland covered in fire and ash. She remembers looking for her sisters, her parents; she remembers finding none. She remembers the cruelty, the way they'd kept them just barely alive; the girls wasting with disease, with fear. She remembers the girls who died: the girls who went pale and quiet, the girls who cried until they couldn't. She remembers the fetid stink of evil in those markets, the hawkers who barked out orders as foreign men put their hands on her arms, her hands; the women who pressed her gums open and whispered approvingly about her teeth.

She hadn't lasted long on the markets. Maria, sweet motherly Maria, who'd seen the way people looked at her at market had haggled for her, had rescued her, had wrapped her matronly arms around her and had whispered, “You're safe now, love.”

And she had sworn never, ever to return.

It had been easy at first. Wakoku was gone, burned; she had no hope of escape and no home to escape to. And Maria had made staying..tolerable, if not easy. Maria had gone unfailingly into the markets for her; she had understood her unspoken slave song so well that sometimes Asaka wondered if perhaps Maria had not been sold into the trade herself. Maria had talked little; her only acknowledgment of a life lived prior to her arrival at Lord Belenus' manor had been something “in the past.” She'd never spilled her secrets, not even when she and the young master Belenus had been the only ones left at her side, feeding Maria ice chips and sweet murmurs that all would be okay.

But Maria had died in slavery, if not in chains. And her responsibilities had fallen to Asaka.

She'd known the markets would come again; she struggled with keeping up with Lord Belenus' extensive manor, her share and Maria's too, but oh how she tried, how she wore her hands to the bone.

She thought of the stink of death and despair, and her stomach had turned.

When Lord Belanus finally admitted to her that he should like to go to the markets, she tried to follow.

But she thought of the smell of the place, and knew she could not do it. She risked her own life by refusing to come – the first time she had expressed her will in a full decade – and had only been spared by the fortune of having a good master.

If such a thing existed, Lord Belenus had been one – unfailingly kind and gentle. He'd taken her freedom, but not her maidenhead, and she was not so naive as to be ungrateful for the distinction.

Had they perhaps been born in more equal rank – well, it would not have mattered. Beloved or not, Lord Belenus had died young. Her first breaths of freedom had come as his life had ebbed, and she was not so naive a servant not to be terrified by the prospect.

He'd he left her no small fortune, and the manor aside. She had spent the first few months in mourning. She could not return to Yamato; it had been too long, the Lassen years weighing too heavily on her shoulders to even think of commandeering a ship. Neither, however, could she stay alone in a house that smelled like dead flowers.

The idea of what to do had come to her in a dream. Lord Belanus had appeared holding the deed to her life. When she had reached for it, he'd torn it in two, his pale lips quirking into a small smile.

And now she was rapidly nearing the first step of her journey.

Asaka bent down, picking a small flower growing between the cracks in the crossroad and placing it in her hair. _Remember_ , she thinks, pressing it into her hair. _You choose your fate._

She took a deep breath, breathed in the scent of fresh life and countryside, and listened for the language of her homeland.

She was not so Lassen as to not be unmoved by the sweet murmurs of a Yamato tongue, the melodic if desperate words hitting her hears with such sweet ferocity as to make her nearly weep.

She had returned.

Her legs wobbled but she pushed her way forward to the top of the auction floor. She moved slowly, gently pushing her way to the front. There were no other Yamato she noticed; it would be hard not to, given the looks others threw her way.

The barker stood on the stage above them, and she takes a deep breath. Was it the same man always? She did not know, but her stomach clenched in terror all the same, her hand tight on her purse.

_It's okay. They can't hurt you now._

“Ladies and gentleman,” he began. “These young men and women we've gathered for you today are fresh from Yamato,” he said, doffing his hat in a display of reverence that seems inappropriate. “Captured by our blessed warriors under the Gerebellum flag, we bring you these souls, ready to be turned into productive laborers for your homes and businesses!”

Liar, she thought, but she bit her tongue. She was rendered near speechless a moment later, when the barker shoved two girls on stage. Her heart ached at the fear in their eyes – they were young, far too young to know the ugliness of this world. She didn't 'think the eldest had reached her bleeding, and the youngest would have just barely been learning to write.

“Yumi? What's going on?” The younger asked and her heart was sliced in twain as the older sister folded a hand around her sister's mouth.

“Shall we start the bidding at erm, 7 gold a piece?” The barker grinned, his golden teeth glinting cruel in the light. “Both maidens. Unfamiliar to work, but they'll learn that famous Lassen work ethic soon enough, eh?”

“Ten gold for the younger!” 

“Fourteen for the younger!”

“Eight for the oldest!”

The eldest cried, silent tears sobbing down her cheeks. None of those bidding on her noticed.

None but Asaka.

She stood, her hand on her purse. 'Twenty five for both.”

There was a stunned silence in the room. The barker recovered first: “Going once! Going Twice! Sold to the ...lady up front!”

There were some strange whispers about a Yamato buying their own, but Asaka ignored them. The girls were peddled backstage, and she feels guilty for not going back to get them right away.

A young man iwas pushed out next; this one closer to her age, with the scars to show for it. She wondered, idly, if the scar crossing his chest was caused by the war or by the journey across the sea. Her eyes fell upon the ragged stump on his right hand, and she swallowed.

He glared hatefully to the crowd. His fury was immense, especially to her. The word ' _traitor_ ' hit his breath in her home dialect, and her eyes watered.

But she did not let it distract her from her purpose.

“This one is offered at a deep discount,” the barker said, almost bored. “Two gold.”

“Four!”

“Six!”

“Twenty!” She said, and the Yamato's eyes darted toward her in surprise. She nidded back at him.

And then it was on to the next prisoner – an old man, barely able to walk but somehow still expected to serve. 3 gold.

And the next: a young man, barely weaned from his mother's milk. Six gold.

By the fifth time she outsold the crowd, buying a twelve year old child with long, silky hair, there were larger whispers about her circulating in the crowd. She heard them – _some Yamato stealing the lord's coin_ – but no one acted, so she kept buying.

Six – a young girl, twelve, her kimono so burned it barely covered her genitals. Twenty gold.

Seven – an older woman, whose wrinkled face reminded her of Maria. Six gold.

Eight – A mother torn from her child, her milk soaking through the cloth of her gown. Ten gold.

Nine – A toddler, male. Six gold.

Ten, Eleven, Twelve – Three young teenage girls, with eyes red from crying. Thirty gold.

And then, at last, when the barker came back out and says that all the slaves have been sold for the day, she stood and walked back to her countrymen. They were  huddled together for warmth and hope and whatever else they could find in this land so far from home.

“My name is Asaka.” She said, bowing deep in the old custom.

“Mistress Asaka,” The old man bowed in return. “Are you taking us to the master?”

“No.” She said softly. “Just Asaka. And you are?”

“Erm, Toku, miss.” He looked uncomfortable. “Weren't you the one who bought us, ma'am? Aren't you taking us to a master?”

“I bought your deeds,” – she was careful to say deeds, never **I** _ **h** ave bought you_, for paper can be bought and sold even if souls cannot. She turned to the group. “Could you tell me your names, please?”

She listened to them – Nanami, Wen, Himiko, Yume, Yuri, Hiro, Tatsuya, Noriko, Daisuke, Enoki, Mika – and commited each to memory.

You're safe now, everyone,” she said, the taste of Yamato strange and foreign in her tongue after all these years. “Come with me.”

The way they cling together told her that they don't believe her, but the group followed her anyway.

\- - -

She rook them back to the Belenus mansion, the deeds to twelve human lives burning in her hands.

The trip was mostly silent – the slaves did not dare to murmur when the mistress knew their tongue. 

She brought them into the Belenus mansion, crowded them into the hall where she once groveled and begged for mercy. Some of the children were crying; the adults didn't, but all looked uncertain, ill at east.

“I told you all that you were safe here. Please understand that. You are free,” she said in their Yamato tongue. She held up the bag of gold she had pulled from the bank. “If you wish to go back to Yamato, I will pay your voyage. If you do not, you may stay here with me, and I shall pay you for your work. This is a good estate, and I will treat you fairly.”

“And you're not gonna to stop us if we want to go?” The one-handed swordsman – Enoki – asked.

“I shall not stop you.” She bowed toward him. “If that is your wish. It is your choice.”

“I don't believe you,” Enoki said, gripping his one good arm to his chest. “How is it a Yamato has such power here?”

“I was a slave,” she said, brushing one hand self-consciously through her unadorned hair. “But when my master died, I was freed. He had no children.” She held her hands out to the wide, empty hall. “This is his inheritance.”

“Ah,” the old woman - Wen – clucked her tongue. “How do we know you're a Yamato? These _Gerebi_ –” the name uttered like a curse – “are very skilled at appearing as other things.”

“I was born in Wakoku,” she said, her hands finding their ways into her sleeves. “My father is Tenkai, my mother Izunori. I had sisters: Reika, Kasune, Hideya. Then the Gerebellum came and...” She shivered. Lord Belenus had read her the reports of Wakoku's fate, thinking it would comfort her to know she had no home to return to – but the opposite had been true. “I have been here since.”

“I believe you.” the old man – Tatsuya – said. “I was stationed at Wakoku.”

“Don't be fooled!” Wen hissed. “Do you not have our papers there, miss?”

“Not for long.” All eyes turn toward her as she smiled, ripping the first of twelve deeds.

The room was silent, so she ripped another. Then another. Then another.

By the time she ripped up the third, Tatsuya starts to cry.

“Free,” she whispered. _You choose your fate._ “Free.”


End file.
